LLT 180 "Hero and Quest" - Course Objectives and General Education

This section of LLT 180 Hero and Quest fulfills the "Self-Understanding - Humanities Perspective" General Education requirement. The course objectives, as listed below, are keyed to the following General Education goals.
  1. Understanding the nature of our humanness and how human beings are like and different from the other beings with whom they share the planet.
    From the wide (geographically, chronologically, and ethnically) range of readings, students wil not only develop a concept of human similarities and dissimilarities, but the ability to see themselves against this diverse cultural backdrop.

  2. Knowledge of individual physical, emotional, intellectual, social and creative development as well as ability to use such knowledge to improve personal well-being.
    Students will apply the theme of katabasis, in which the hero's quest for enhanced well-being leads to personal development and even spiritual rebirth, to their own lifelong journeys of self-discovery.

  3. Knowledge of individual physical, emotional, intellectual, social, historical, spatial, and cultural matrices into which the individual is born; and the influence of the unique set of experiences which the individual encounters.
    Students will learn to evaluate the the protagonists of these readings both as products of their native cultures but also as people who strive heroically against the arbitrary limits placed upon them by society.

  4. Ability to perceive one’s own being not only from cognitive perspectives but also from those perspectives which come from exposure to and creative vision of the arts – to imagine the possibilities the future holds and to develop responsible goals for interactions with others, modes of personal expression, and roles in improving the world.
    Through close study of the oldest literary motif of all time, students will come to further appreciate the creative arts for reasons going far beyond the merely aesthetic - since (literally) the dawn of recorded time, human society has used the arts as a crucial medium for negotiating and transmitting the entirety of human culture.